Week 31 was a bit of a washout personally. I was laid up in bed all week with a virus and infection, so no boatbuilding for me 😦
It’s amazing how much you can miss in a week at the BBA. The others made more progress on the projects and turned both Mark and Steve’s boats. It was great to come back and see all the boats the right way up – Steve’s added some good photos of the Herreshoff being turned on his blog.
I was back at school on the following tuesday, and it was time to help Mark start fitting out the electric river launch, Barbara-Ann.
We started by making and fitting the engine beds for his electric motor. These are laid across 3 of the floors and needed some holes cut into them to accept gallery bolts (as we can’t fit the bolts right through the bottom of the engine beds).
Barbara-Ann the right way up with floors fitted
Using a mock up of the engine to work out the position and angle of the engine beds to fit the propeller shaft
We cut the galleries for the bolts using the morticing machine in the funiture workshop. It is possible to drill a square hole!
After that it was time to spile, cut and fit the plywood frames. The river launch is cold moulded so whilst the hull is pretty stiff, the frames will provide additional stiffness and create a foundation on which we can hang the soleboards, lockers/seats and other internal components.
A nice pile of freshly cut frames – these are for the port side of the boat so I also made a copy of each for the starboard side.
Frames fitted and supporting douglas fir battens added, on which sit the permanent soleboards. The gap in the middle is where the removable soleboards will be, which will allow Mark access to the bilges if necessary.
The plan is to deck over the plywood soleboards with Mahogany and then fit U-shaped seating around the sides, fore and aft of the boat. The motor will eventually sit inside a small engine box, which will double up as a table. We’ll continue to fit out the boats next week so I’ll post more pictures as things progress.
The last job of the week was to thickness the rudder so that the bronze fittings fitted. For some reason they came in a 7/8th of a inch, instead of a full inch as ordered. So a quick pass through the thicknesser was enough to get them to the right dimensions.
Adventures in boatbuilding 